Remembering 9-10 2001

 Remembering 9-10 2001

On Monday, September 10, 2001 I reported to Grand Jury selection on Centre Street in NYC. They were convening multiple Grand Juries, mostly for morning sessions and two for afternoons. They mentioned to us that there would be some days when we would get out early. Most of the people there wanted to get on the morning sessions, so that they could go to work in the afternoons. Along with a handful of others, I volunteered for the afternoon session.

After selection was over I decided to walk home. I lived in Chelsea at the time, so this meant walking across town and up Hudson Street, which would eventually take me up Eighth Avenue. But first I went down to J&R Music to have a look around. This put me directly across town from the World Trade Center, so I decided to walk past it on my way home. On the way home I paused beneath the great buildings and recalled the times I had been inside.

The first visit I think happened during grade school. I have vague memories of a chaperoned trip to Windows on the World. When I approached college graduation my mother took me back there. The clouds were low in the sky that day, obscuring our view of the city below. Around the same time I went to a Borders Bookstore in the basement of the twin towers to interview for a job, only to eventually get turned down. I was very disappointed.

During sophomore year of college I stayed in a dorm room with a perfect picture window view of the twin towers. I spent countless hours staring out at the buildings, remembering watching westerns on WPIX-TV during weekends at my father’s house. Station identifications would show the towers, and then superimpose the number eleven over the towers, alongside with the station logo. That year in my college dorm room I felt like I was in my father’s living room, but looking at the towers live. I watch the blinking lights on the roof as if they were sheep, waiting for them to blink in unison. Then every morning when I woke up I would watch them again.

When I turned seventeen my father told me that I was a man, and that I didn’t need him around anymore. He moved out to the Midwest to look after his ailing parents. But pretty soon our contact became sporadic. For a period of two and a half years, while I was in college, I didn’t even know how to contact him. I remember thinking then how foolish it seemed. This was the age when I needed him most. I wanted his advice but had only his memory. The towers carried me through some of those lonely nights when I struggled with the responsibility of becoming my own man without my father’s guidance.

My father did eventually find his way back into my life during in the late-mid 1990’s. My mother was throwing a summer party at her house on Long island. My girlfriend and I headed out there together. When I turned the corner into the backyard my father was standing there.

By the summer of 2001, my mother was ready to sell her house and move to the city full-time. My father came out from Ohio to help her close out the place, and pick up a few of his things which he had been storing in her basement. I was single then, and happy to hang out with my mother and a father with whom I seldom spent enough time. As we drove out to dinner on one of those nights, WCBS radio disclosed CIA reports of chatter regarding an attack on New York City. We talked about it briefly, before turning our attention back to the more pressing issue of closing up the house. We also discussed my impending jury service in just a few weeks.

Eleven years ago today, standing in the shadow of the twin towers, I considered going up to the observation deck to look out on my city. But it had been a long day. I was tired, and I had a nervous feeling that I had to go home. I looked up at the north tower and told myself that I had a whole month of grand jury duty ahead of me, and there would be plenty of time to go up to the observation deck later.

Of course, I was wrong…

Independence Day and the Cruel Irony of Obamacare

We call this very date “Independence Day” and join to celebrate it on an annual basis. For many it may come simply as a welcome day off from work. For others it signals the opportunity to commence a gathering over common interests. The gathering may vary greatly in the disparate corners of our union; from ball games with friends to family barbeques, from awed appreciation of fireworks to concerts, and any manner of preoccupation in between. There is nothing wrong with this. It is in fact a carrying out of the very rights and freedoms which our forefathers fought to ensure. However, somewhere within the recesses of our minds, every one of us should carry some acknowledgement of the momentous resonance of this day.

 

Today is not about a war. At it its core, neither is it is not about a victory. Our celebration of the anniversary of July 4, 1776 is about Liberty. Today is about a people who stood up to declare their sovereignty over ownership of their own land, to conduct commerce for their own good, and to make judgment for themselves as to the best counsel for their own individual minds, bodies and souls. After centuries of kings and emperors and their ilk eschewing the virtues of collectivism, The United States of America was the first nation on Earth to firmly set into law the virtues of individualism. Remember this any time somebody talks to you about the common good. With the presumed rare exception of criminals who employ force or fraud against their fellow man, the only common good can come when all men of virtue are considered free.

 

It is not belief which is deemed by society as immoral of unethical, but actions which are legislated by government as illegal. Government, in its effort to prevent force or fraud by any individual or group against any other individual or group, is justified in telling its citizenry what actions it will consider, as taken by that citizenry, to be illegal. However, government is never justified in imposing force or fraud against those citizens who seek to live in accord with the laws of the land. Once government begins creating regulations which employ force or fraud against its citizenry, the legitimacy of that government becomes suspect.

 

Any discrimination by government regarding laws, lawmaking, rights or regulations, is an affront to liberty; whether it is by gender, ethnic background, philosophy or religion, gender preference, intellectual or physical ability, body type, asset holding or productive ability, or any other conceivable manner in which government might attempt to say that one individual or group of individuals holds dominion over another individual or group of individuals. In the free market of ideas individuals have the right to believe whatever they want with regards to discrimination, so long as they do not act to bring about bodily harm or to cause any other infringement upon the rights of their fellow citizens. The government does not have this right. After all, the term “government service” did not spring forth from the head of Zeus on a wave of foam. As with most phrases it was born of purpose, to connote the intention of its specific aspect. Government exists for the sole purpose of serving the people, not the other way around. Legitimate government must be, at all times, absolute in defending the inalienable rights of its citizens.

 

To be clear, rights are not entitlements. An individual is entitled to work towards the virtue of his own happiness, by the production of his own effort, unencumbered by taxes and levies forced upon him against his will for the sole purpose of apportioning the fruits of his labors to those who cannot or will not engage in equivalent labors. The Declaration of Independence, (along with The Constitution of the United States of America, The Articles of Confederation, and the Bill of Rights) guarantees the right to “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” to all citizens of the United States of America. One of the operative phrases, “The pursuit of happiness” is often misinterpreted as meaning that citizens have the right to be happy, while in fact when taken literally, the right actually guaranteed is to pursue happiness. There is nothing in any of those four original documents that says that citizens have the right to have happiness redistributed to them by government. It is your right by your own effort, and your own effort alone, which the founders sought to guarantee as a means towards the achievement of your own happiness. The nature of existence, and of the free market, will set obstacles against us which we, each to his own stead and by his own ability, may work to overcome. But it becomes a shot against the bow of Liberty when we work to legislate obstacles against each other, and thus against ourselves.

 

Anyone who knows anything about the law knows that it works largely by precedent. And the precedents we set now may become the thorns in our sides tomorrow. An old family friend, Edward Cline, recently published an article for the website familysecuritymatters.org which discusses the precedents set by Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John Roberts’ decision regarding the Affordable Care Act (Aka. “Obamacare”.) Besides laying out the issues regarding ACA, the article also points out some the fundamental philosophical errors which gird the loins of the entrenched altruistic tendencies in government that have plagued liberty since even before our nation’s birth. The injustice of bearing witness to this scourge against the spirit of our union, so close to our celebration of the anniversary of its birth, compelled me to comment. What I wrote there spoke to the impending doom implicit in the decision of Justice Roberts regarding freedom and the sovereignty of the peoples of this nation. Having already posted my comment, prior to the above more thorough consideration of the subject, I decided to share my original comment once again on my own blog. The full text is included in the following paragraph:

 

Nationalism without liberty is statism. And when the state mandates force upon its citizens there is no liberty, for there are no longer any citizens. Citizens dominated by the will of the state are subjects in service of empire. Such a transgression can only be levied against a free people if the government is willing to engage is fraud, and if the people are uncritical enough in their thinking to accept it. As government always makes law with the power of the gun as the implied threat of enforcement, there is only one logical progression available in a nation which willfully chooses to defraud its citizenry and refuses to represent their voice…Let us hope that there is yet the time and the will for reason to prevail.

  

I’ll wrap up with four quotes, by the twentieth century philosopher Ayn Rand, which seem to sum up nicely the crux of the position expounded above.

• “Do not ever say that the desire to "do good" by force is a good motive. Neither power-lust nor stupidity are good motives.”
• ” Government "help" to business is just as disastrous as government persecution... the only way a government can be of service to national prosperity is by keeping its hands off.”
• ” Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual).”
• ” It only stands to reason that where there's sacrifice, there's someone collecting the sacrificial offerings. Where there's service, there is someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice is speaking of slaves and masters, and intends to be the master.”

Some Thoughts on Copyrights

A few weeks ago, a friend asked me if I would mind his reposting something I had written. He had posted a link to his blog on a social networking site, at which location a dialogue had opened up. He then wanted to include a portion of our conversation as follow-up on his blog. I was happy to oblige, but the prospect did get me thinking about copyrights. My primary concern was that I be able to reproduce my own ideas in my own work, if such an eventuality should come to pass, at some time in the future. The social networking site was a semi-public forum, so I assumed my rights to my created content were minimal, but I didn’t really know for sure. The subject seemed worthy of further investigation.

What are your rights to reproduction once you have expressed a thought on the internet? Does where you write an idea have any impact on your rights to the thought you have expressed? How can you protect yourself and your right to re-use your own ideas in places other than where you first posted them, even if that first post was on someone else’s forum?

I will start by pointing out that I am not a copyright attorney, have no legal qualifications in this regard, and if you have any serious legal claim regarding a copyright infringement you should consult a certified professional attorney who has passed the bar exam in your state.

That said, it would seem to me that writing is writing, no matter where you do it. So your legal copy rights should remain the same on the internet as they would anywhere else in America. And since just about everything you post on the internet is time stamped, (I’m making allowance for the possibility that there is somewhere out there where it isn’t time stamped, even though I don’t know where that might be), the question of who wrote something first should be even easier to determine on the internet. The assumption here is that the person who can prove that they wrote something first, would logically be expected to be the first person to have written it, and therefore to holder of the legal right to that writing. The time stamp is essentially the digital equivalent of the classic concept of “The poor man’s copyright”, and practice of mailing your own work to yourself in order to establish copyright without having to pay for copyright protection. The so-called “Poor man’s copyright” is not an official form of protection, and most likely offers a cursory form of protection at best. The same could be assumed to be true of the digital time stamp. But at least something is better than nothing.

So what is the actual copyright law? The United States Copyright Office identifies that a “Copyright is a form of protection grounded in the U.S. Constitution and granted by law for original works of authorship fixed in a tangible medium of expression. Copyright covers both published and unpublished works.” The website of the US Copyright Office goes into fuller detail on the law in the FAQ page, one of the key points being “Your work is under copyright protection the moment it is created and fixed in a tangible form that it is perceptible either directly or with the aid of a machine or device.”

By this standard, any idea that you as an individual have written on a forum, which does not state otherwise in the legal agreement which you may have accepted in order to begin posting, and which can be identified as having been written by you and which can be fixed in time, belongs to you. (A lot of the big sites require that you check-off a legal agreement before you post anything. Copyrights establishing the website’s ability to edit or use your copy may very well constitute a portion of what you are agreeing to when you sign up. If you are concerned about your right to reproduce content, you may want to read the legalese more carefully.) It is worth mentioning however, that if you thought something but did not write it, or wrote something which was later expressed differently by someone else, you would not seem to be protected by copyright law. To be clear, the copyright law states that “Copyright protects original works of authorship, while a patent protects inventions or discoveries. Ideas and discoveries are not protected by the copyright law, although the way in which they are expressed may be.” So A patent remains an alternative in order to protect a discovery, but an idea is up for grabs once it has been revealed in public.

If you are responding to some big public forum which is owned and operated by a private company, you may have to sign away your rights before you post anything. But then what about social networking? If your friend posts a thought on his social networking page, or opens up a forum within a social network, and then you post some deep insightful response which subsequently gets everyone talking, what are your rights then?

Well, we’ve already established that ideas are not copyrightable, and that only the tangible expression of ideas can be copyrighted. And we can assume that most of your friends are not posting legalese copyright disclaimers on their social networking posts or forums. It would seem logical to me that once you have posted and item on someone else’s page you have granted them the right to reproduce or share your ideas. Certainly, given the proclivity of posts to go viral, you should be considering whether you are willing to stand by what you have said before you make a post. Regardless of your rights, the practical reality is that once it’s on the internet it’s hard to pull back.

What do the social networking sites have to say about copyright? A little blue link titled “Terms” led me to another link to the “Statement of Rights and Responsibilities” on one popular social networking website, where interesting insights into copy rights and protections were revealed. The website makes a statement guaranteeing your rights to your own content. It does claim the right to reproduce that content in conjunction with the “IP License”. (Some limited experience with programming leads me to believe that this is necessary in order to program the website.) The license ends if you delete your account or when you choose to delete the specific content. The website also lays out rules for respecting the rights of other social networkers, and threatens action for non-compliance. In other words, if you make a habit of ripping people off or in any other way abusing the rights of your fellow social networkers, the website is stating that it may take legal action against you.

I am a little leery of posting actual verbatim legalese from a social networking site on my blog. I can only assume that the potential for conflict exists. This was probably not the sexiest topic to cover on my return to blogging, but it seems like the right place to start anyway. How better to establish that I reserve the right to all content that I produce for this blog, and also that I reserve the right to delete any content which I deem inappropriate. I know this doesn’t constitute an official copyright agreement, but there I’ve said it. This is my blog, and I decide what stays or goes. I said it here. I said it now. Check the time stamp.

Teach Yourself

Recently the Texas government voted to alter history books to downplay slavery and evolution, and play up the role of creationism in the thoughts and actions of the founding fathers. The resulting uproar was understandable. However, the biggest problem confronting the US today is not in the writing of government funded, revisionist history, and textbook fabrication. The biggest problem is in the failure of Postmodernist philosophy to promote education as a way of life, rather than simply a means to employment.

Prior to Rousseau, Enlightment philosophy valued learning and rational application of learning, on its own merit. But when he and later Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Marx, etc., began attacking reality as an irrelevant aspect of the human experience, they in turn began the devaluation of learning in society. Today we have a western civilization that believes that you go to school simply because it is your duty. But graduation from school should not be the ending of education, but rather the beginning.

I have long thought that enlightenment ethics and philosophy should be taught as a course in high schools nationwide, but seeing as even among my many talented teachers, few seemed to understand these concepts, I can't imagine who would teach the course. Most educators teach how to learn, but they often do not teach you how to think. You are on your own for that one. In the absence of any rational philosophical instruction, most people fall back on the only pseudo-philosophy they have ever encountered, namely religion. However, I have learned much more since school, by forming my own curriculum, than I ever did when I was in school, about how the mind works, how systems work, how economics function, and so many other things.

Recommended Reading:
"Explaining Postmodernism" by Stephen R.C. Hicks
"Economics In One Lesson" by Henry Hazlitt
"End the Fed" by Ron Paul
"For the New Intellectual" by Ayn Rand
"The Virtue of Selfishness" by Ayn Rand
"Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology" by Ayn Rand
"Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal" by Ayn Rand

I'm still working my way up to Ludwig Von Mises, Adam Smith Isaac Newton and John Locke, but I suspect I would recommend them too. Take your education into your own hands. If you would work out your body to keep it fit, why would you not also work out your mind? A self-directed, life-long commitment to your own education is the only sane choice for a rational mind.

The Obama-Warren Contradiction: Finding the Moral High-Ground in the Politics of Gender Preference

The inauguration of the 44th President of the United States of America is only weeks away. And here we stand on the eve of something historic. In the wake of an ugly history of racism and bigotry of other forms, a man has found the courage and the drive to rise above the fray. This man has transcended beyond the petty politics of division which daily threaten to tear apart our great republic, has risen above the ignorant rhetoric of race, has called out to the best hopes and dreams of a lonely nation that knew it should demand better of itself…And that nation answered.

On January 20, 2009 Barrack Obama will assume the presidency of our country, but his election has already changed us as a nation. This historic election represents a sea-change in the expectations that we as Americans place upon our elected representatives, to uphold their offices in dignified practice. Mr. Obama has promised a White House that is more open, more accountable, and more responsive to the concerns of the American people.

We should not be surprised by this pledge. This is exactly what Mr. Obama called for in his speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2004. This brand of moral righteousness is what he wrote about in his 2006 book, The Audacity of Hope. And this is the bold vision he expressed consistently as he campaigned to open the hearts and minds of voters all across this nation to the plausibility of Change.

Senator Barrack Obama ran for the Office of President, but we voted for the man. And once the results of the election had been tallied, and we knew that the man for whom we had voted had won the office he sought, we all crossed our fingers in a sincere hope that he would not allow the heady nature of the office he is now destined to occupy undermine the core of his character. We are waiting with baited breath to see if the man we elected will actually prove to be the man we get.

Preliminary results are a bit mixed. While many liberals will admit to being more than a bit anxious about Obama’s decision to retain Robert Gates as secretary of Defense, (a holdover from the Bush era), the general consensus is that the President Elect has done an exceptional job recruiting his cabinet.

But just as we prepare to give praise to a man who has made so many correct moves in favor of thwarting the divisive residue of our political culture, he goes and picks Reverend Rick Warren, a man who represents the engine of division in this country, to be a speaker at the inauguration. Rick Warren was a key player in support of the passage of proposition 8, banning gay marriage in California. For a man dedicated towards bringing our nation together, it seems odd that Mr. Obama would choose this momentous occasion to bestow the honor of his stage upon the serpent in our garden, and give audience to the mouthpiece of the masquerading faithful who hide behind religion while preaching bigotry.

I am neither gay nor black. And yet neither is a prerequisite for seeing clearly how wrong it is to allow government to legislate bigotry of any form. I do maintain that there are many intelligent, moral people among us who fully comprehend the travesty of justice being perpetrated by those who seek to undermine the civil rights of Gay Americans. But for some reason those people remain in the shadows while their best intentions lay shackled in silence. These people should ask themselves something. What kind of person are you? How would you like to see yourself? What would you stand for? Who among us does not identify with one minority group or another? If we do not stand for each other, we risk falling alone.

As a caucasion, male atheist with a thinning hairline, a lineage tracked back to Russian and Romanian Jews, Scottish, German, and Native American ancestors, a private religious-education, an affinity for science fiction, a tendency towards driving American-made cars, an appreciation for rum-raisin ice cream, a soft belly where my abs used to be, a love affair with the state about to loose its junior senator to the office fifth in-line to the presidency, a fondness for salty sea-air…. I think you get the point.

More importantly, you must recognize that the more we acknowledge our differences, the more insignificant they seem on a grander scale. Even though in fourth grade I refrained from saying one two-word phrase while reciting the pledge of allegiance, I still love my country. Even if you don’t set off fireworks on the fourth of July, root for the so-called “America’s Team” Dallas Cowboys or the so-called “American Pastime’s” winningest franchise New York Yankees, drive a Chevy, eat apple-pie, drink diet coke, or wear red-white-and-blue striped pajamas, I’d be willing to believe you if you said that you love America too. And if you didn’t say it, that would be your right. This is America, the melting pot, where we defend the rights of the few to protect the many. Or so we claim….

I hope that the president elect will see his error, and rescind his support for California’s proposition 8 banning gay marriage, as it represents a boon to all those who favor government legislated bigotry. How many Plessy vs. Fergussons do we need before we learn from history? Gay people are no less deserving of the right to declare their love for one another than are any of the rest of us. I further hope that Mr. Obama will at least speak to the issue he has created with his endorsement of the so-called reverend. Like most religious radicals, the hatred Rick Warren preaches does not appear to be contained within the texts he uses to defend his position. And even if it were, his position would still have to be considered wrong.

When it comes to bigotry, you either are or you aren’t. Despite what we may allow the law to at times claim, there is no middle-ground for justice. And there can be no compromise with those who would advocate for hate in our society. We need a president who will speak up and remind this nation that we must act to defend the civil rights of every citizen if we are truly to become one America.

I believe President Barrack Obama is a better man than this most tragic error in judgement. I hope I am right.

The Election of Barack Obama in Relation to the California Ban Against Same Sex Marriage

The election of Barack Obama signifies a great step forward in the cultural history of United States of America, as well as a tremendous improvement for our cultural standing as a leader in the world community. For many Americans this election is seen in part as a victory for the progression of civil rights. As we embrace this momentous occasion we should not see this only as a close on the disgraceful chapter of racial inequality in this nation, but rather as the first paragraph for a new chapter of increased inclusion for all groups in the cultural melting-pot we call America.

At this juncture in the evolution of our nation we should all be proud of the growth and maturity the people of the United States have shown by casting aside some of the divisions that held us back from striving for the realization of our better selves. However, there is still much to be done. Bigotry still survives like a colony of cockroaches in the cracks and recesses of our cultural fabric. It is unfortunate, and terribly sobering to realize that the stink of bigotry still lingers, not only in terms of race, but also in terms of gender and gender preference, as well as religious and/or philosophical credo.

The United States of America was founded on the principles of equality and inclusion. But in its founding, this nation was saddled with blind spots in its understanding of those principles. Throughout our history, we the people, in order to form a more perfect union, have striven to expand our vision by improving our embrace of our fellow citizenry and all of our humanity. We have striven and achieved a degree of political inclusion and representation for people of a myriad of faiths (Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Atheists, etc.), inclusion and representation for people of a myriad of ethnic backgrounds (Jews, Irish, Italians, Latino, African American, Asian American, etc.), inclusion and representation for women, and yet we still fail as a nation to comprehend the civil rights travesty we impose by restricting the rights of Gay Americans. We will never be able to say that we live up to the name of our country until we have chosen to dispatch ALL bigotry to the locked crypt of history.

The duty of government is to protect the civil liberties of its people. Any time government acts to infringe upon the civil liberties of some its people, it infringes upon the civil liberties of its entire populace. The California vote to create a law banning same sex marriage constitutes just such an attack upon the spirit of this nation. We are all minorities in the United States of America and we must act to protect each other from government infringement against all of our civil liberties.

There is no legal justification for a ban against same sex marriage. Many may point to their own moral belief, based upon long held religious convictions, that same sex marriage is wrong. As Americans it is their right to hold and profess these beliefs. However, it is not the right of any American to impose their beliefs upon any other American. Furthermore, the Bill of Rights prohibits government from enacting any law on the basis of religion. If the only reason for enacting legislation against same sex marriage rests with religious convictions and/or “feelings” without regard to supportable evidence, than government has no right to enact such legislation. Any such act on behalf of exclusion towards any citizen of the United States should be seen as a travesty towards the American ideal. If the United States of America aspires to promote itself as a nation worthy of its name, than it must always stand up for the unification of its people under the law.

Philosopher and novelist Ayn Rand held that when faced with a philosophical contradiction one should always check their premises. The ban against same sex marriage is just such a contradiction against the principles upon which this nation was founded. And we are arriving at this contradiction because we as a nation are asking the wrong question. The question should not be whether or not to ban same sex marriage. The question should be whether or not we as a nation believe that homosexuals are entitled to equal protection under the law. In this context, I believe that the better nature of most Americans would affirm this right.

With the election of Barack Obama to the United States presidency, we the people of the United States of America have begun driving the automobile of Hope down the highway of positive Change. Now is the time to be inspired for what we can become. Now is the time to put the pedal to the metal and drive towards a better America, a more inclusive America, and America where every human being has a voice and a legal right towards the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness under the law.

President elect Obama has said that “We are not a red America and a blue America… We are not a black America and a white America…” To carry this ideal along its logical progression, we must also acknowledge that we are also not a gay America and a straight America… We are not a non-religious America and a religious America… We are not an America of divisions… We are not an America of exclusion….

We are an America whose strength is reinforced every time we stand up in favor of our common humanity. We are One America, and we should strive to Remember and Fight for that in every aspect of our Union.